Demon's in the Detailsby
Chris Dee

Trading Pieces

“Come again?” Barbara asked, rescrambling the signal
for the fourth time since Catwoman dropped the last bombshell.

..::Oracle, this is getting ridiculous,::.. the
hushed phone-voice stated without a hint of static or white noise obscuring
the weariness of the speaker. ..::I’ve told you everything I know, and I
can’t find out anything more if you keep making me repeat what I’ve said
already.::..

“There are procedures, Catwoman. B asked me to confirm
your report. On the OraCom, in the city, it’s no problem. I’d have the
traceback signature, I’d know it’s you. This is a… what did you say it
was? A public telephone in a sports bar?”

..::Close enough. But it’s not a public phone, it’s
Pete’s phone, and he’s letting me use it, in his office, to call home and
tell you all I’m not dead. He didn’t figure on you calling me back—neither
of us figured on you calling me back ten minutes later for this
inquisition. Now, I’m in a little office in back of the bar, and there’s
just a small half-window where I can see out to the tables, and that’s where
I can see—yep, that’s Ubu. Looks like his drink order came. So if you
don’t mind, I’d like to get out there and find out what the hell is going
on.::..

“Catwoman, wait! No! It’s a trap!”

..::You know what, O? If Ra’s knew I’d be here—if
he actually planned on my being undercover at the conference, getting
captured and winding up on that ship, being discovered and forced to jump
off at the precise point where this island was the nearest place for a
school of rescue fish to bring me, and he had Ubu here waiting, so as soon
as I found this bar and came into the back room to make a phone call, they
could spring the trap on me—if that’s the situation, he deserves to win.
I’ll call you when I know more.::..

I could understand Barbara’s disbelief. “Ubu walks
into a bar” is the start of a joke, not an aside during a frantic call from
the boss’s girlfriend to send a plane, a boat, or a caped colleague to pick
her up in the middle of the Atlantic.
But Ubu DID walk into the bar while I had Barbara on the line, and it
just seemed like the sort of thing Batman would want to know about.

Of course, from Ubu’s point of view, “Catwoman walked
into a bar” is probably the start of a joke too.

Some cosmic force was definitely having fun with one of
us, and I wasn’t sure who was going to be the punchline. Although our
relative dampness argued that I was there to plague Ubu and not the other
way around. Pete had supplied me with a Café Sport t-shirt and let me make
a wrapskirt out of a beach towel, so I was able to jettison the last of the
DEMON threads, and the only part of me that still dripped was my hair. Ubu,
on the other hand, was a walking puddle machine.

He’d settled at a square table near the wall, a small
chair on one side that would have been toothpicks if he tried to sit in it,
and a sturdy booth on the other where he could sit and drip-drip-drip a
little river along the edge of the sloped floor and out the door. Pete
brought him several small plates of local delicacies, and he was
concentrating on his food a little too much to notice me strolling up to the
table, until it was too late:

“Hey, Ubs,” I said cheerily, settling into the rickety
chair across from him.

He looked startled but far from hostile. Wearing the
bar t-shirt, he might have thought I was a particularly friendly waitress.
I decided to jog his memory a little, so I peered into the plate nearest
him.

“What have we got there, fried songbirds? Looks
tasty.” And then, even though I don’t stretch the theme to the point where
crispy canaries are a tasty snack, I picked up one of the fried birdies and
had a nibble. Then I purred.

“You are the Detective’s feline concubine,” he said
finally.

“Meow,” and a twiddling fingertip wave confirmed my
identity, and that was it for a minute or so. I got the impression Ubu was
a lot more comfortable standing behind Ra’s like a floor lamp and letting
the cadaver do all the talking. I obviously had to take the initiative.

“Is there any possible way to file a name change with
you guys?” I asked seriously. “Couldn’t I be, I don’t know, ‘She with whom
locks are pointless’ or maybe ‘the lumpy purple one with the ears’ or ‘watch
out for those claws?’ Something that’s more about me than him.”

“What do you want, woman?” Ubu asked (a fair question,
actually, but not one I intended to answer).

“Oh,
nothing much. Run into somebody you know in a place like this, far from
home, middle of nowhere, it’s natural to come over and say ‘Hi.’” I looked
around the bar theatrically. “Anybody else I know in the neighborhood? I
mean usually wherever you are, old man Ra’s is flitting around, isn’t he?
But I don’t,
uh... Nope, I don’t see him. You ‘gone rogue,’ so to speak?”

He just stared at me. If I didn’t know he spoke
English, I would have thought he didn’t follow a word I was saying.

“No, what am I saying?”
I laughed. “DEMONs don’t go rogue! The loyalty of the Ubu is absolute,
right? Rather like the focus of the crimefighter on his task.”

There I paused to grin wider. It’s not often I get to
go all Jervis, spouting nonsense that way, but this was a very particular
type of cat-and-mouse game: the more playful I was, the more confused he
would get, and the more confused the mouse, the sooner it runs into a corner
where it shouldn’t.

“Any order, no matter how hare-brained, is your
happiest duty to perform, right? No matter how paranoid or ego-driven or
infomercial-inspired… If His Greatness demands that 10,000 lots of Oxyclean
be dumped into San Francisco Bay, Ubu shall oblige without question. If
celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito must be slain for the glory of the DEMON, he
shall be slain and Ubu shall not question why, right?”

He was still staring, but it was a different stare. It
was the stare of a mouse that feels the hard crease of a corner at his back.

“There were several errands to be run on land,” he said
abruptly. “Rather than dispatch many men and weaken the undersea
contingent, I volunteered to see to them myself.”

I helped myself to another of his fried canaries, and
again I meowed. Ubu sputtered, but not because I was eating his lunch.

“I revealed nothing you did not already know, Feline
Concubine of the Gotham Detective. I stated only that my being here is no
act of desertion. I am on this island on the Master’s business.”

“Riiight,” I said with a wink. “Pete, could we get a
few more gin and tonics over here? And maybe a plate of those conch
fritters? Protesting too much is thirsty work, isn’t it, Ubu?”

He definitely had that cornered mouse look now, and I
thought it was time to let him run a little, thinking he’d found an escape.
I assured him that I was never there, he was never there, what happens in
Horta stays in Horta. I let him eat the rest of his lunch without stealing
any more of his canaries, and I even gave him one of my fritters when they
arrived. He didn’t exactly relax, but he wasn’t on high alert either—which
made the whole episode with the aqua-cops
pretty sad.

There I was, letting the Ubu mouse feel he’d maneuvered
out of the corner and start scurrying around until he would drop more crumbs
like “the undersea contingent” and “errands to run on land.” There was
something about a hot spring on a nearby island, but before I could press
for details, the whole bar got darker. The light streaming in from the open
door was suddenly blocked by a phalanx of them: six figures all together,
four in the uniforms I’d seen in Atlantis, and two that looked like the
local coast guard. Pete’s isn’t the biggest bar in the world, and six men
coming in in a pack fills the space in a very intimidating fashion.
Ubu freaked.

I’m not even sure they intended to capture him when
they came in the door. They might have just been sent as my ride, but once
Ubu started fighting to NOT get captured, well… aqua-cops
are just like the regular kind: If you toss a stick and say “Fetch, Rover!
Go get it, boy!” they’re going to chase that stick.

I stayed out of it. Normally I like getting in on the
action, but this one was such a mess. I don’t know if it was the Atlantean
fighting styles or Ubu’s bulk, but it just didn’t look like fun. I figured
I’d fight later. And if I didn’t get a chance by the end of this little
adventure, Bruce is always ready to accommodate me with a little sparring in
the cave… although, after a DEMON case, chances are he’ll have had his fill,
in which case, we’ll just have to find some other way to work off the
physical tension. Meow.

By the time my thoughts progressed that far, the
Atlanteans were dragging Ubu into what they called a plasma sub, and the
coast guard guys were trying to sign me up for a battery of tests before I
went with them. I’m not sure how Barbara managed to mangle the Anton Geist
information, but it should have been perfectly obvious to everyone that I
was still breathing air. Even if there was still an asterisk on Tim and the
scientists, and even if the jury was still out on what killed the minion, I
was standing right there, watching the aqua-cops
pummel Ubu. I was breathing air! Case closed, let me sign your
little paper and get me on that sub.

Ubu stared ahead, modulated his breathing, and appeared
to zone out. To the Feline (one of those elements in his surroundings he
was finding it difficult to tune out) it must appear he was separating
himself from any awareness of his surroundings. He was a prisoner
preparing himself to undergo whatever tortures his captors might bring, for
nothing, but nothing, could compel him to betray the name of Ra’s al Ghul.

The very suggestion that he could have defected was an
obscenity. There was a need for one at the sea base to go to the
surface and supervise the delivery of the captives. There was a need
to call the compound in Sri Lanka, and The Great One decreed it should be
done from land and not from the arriving ship, for nothing should be left to
chance, no stray transmission that could be intercepted by the Detective and
lead him to Ra’s present location. There was a volcanic caldera
on the nearby island of San Miguel rumored to be a mystic, life-giving
spring, and The Demon’s Head wished it to be surveyed, should it be suitable
for a Lazarus Pit. There was absolutely no need to send three men
when these jobs could all be completed by a single one, and there was no
reason Ubu could not be that man. Once he was on land and found the fabled
hot spring to be a nothing but a fetid blowhole whose waters and steam vents
reeked of sulfur, it was certainly his duty to seek out alternatives. There
were a dozen islands, after all, and the sun that shone down on them was so
very warm. The air was so clean and unfiltered. And the walls of the
little pub where he stopped for lunch had windows that did not bend in
noticeably as you approached crush depth.

It was no act of disloyalty to prefer a room where the
walls did not creak and groan with the weight of an ocean. It was no act of
disloyalty! He preferred walls that did not have the weight of an ocean
pressing them inward towards his head. He preferred air that didn’t reek of
salt water and algae, where every breath didn’t coat his throat with a film
of mossy slime. He may have dallied a bit longer than absolutely necessary,
but the walls did not creak and bend! He would have to eat whether he
returned to the sea base or not, so what was the harm in taking a last meal
on land, with the warm sun and the unfiltered air and the non-creaking
walls?

The harm, obviously, was the accursed Feline who sat
across from him now.

Of all the accursed luck! If the Detective had
somehow gleaned Ra’s al Ghul’s plan and was actively searching the Atlantic,
and if the Feline Concubine had, like any sensible being, found an excuse to
make her way to land and there found the warm sun and unfiltered air a good
enough reason to delay her return, what were the chances they would seek
refuge in the same bar?! What were the chances?! And now, because of that
vile woman, another thrice-damned submarine was taking him back to the ocean
floor.

At least this vessel seemed better built for the
purpose—though it was sacrilege to think so, and Ubu immediately chastened
himself for preferring the infidel Atlantean sub to that provided by Ra’s al
Ghul. In order to squelch these traitorous thoughts, Ubu once again lunged
forward to strangle the Feline.

Catwoman’s arrival in Atlantis was very different from
Batman’s. The plasma sub was no transporter, and there were no formalities
to be observed (or set aside) for its arrival. As far as the Atlantean
Guard was concerned, it was an ordinary vehicle returning from a mission.
Batman wanted to meet it, so Vulko directed him to the docking bay, where he
went unescorted.

He waited alone while the receiving crews did their
jobs,
professionally, efficiently, and without acknowledging the visiting surfacer
in their midst. Before long, a sub docked… The hatch opened… An ensign
stepped out and then turned back to assist a shorter figure emerging behind
him…

Batman’s eyes flickered up and down, inspecting
Selina’s form as she came into view. All vestiges of her disguise were
gone, the wig, the tape distorting her figure, the clothing. Not
unexpected. She wore the kind of improvised getup typical for shipwreck
rescues—except for the tears and pulls around the top of her t-shirt, and
the matching bruises around her neck.

Their eyes met for a long moment, which was as
demonstrative as either of them were comfortable with in a docking bay full
of strangers.

“What happened?” Batman asked finally, indicating the
bruising on her neck by pointing to his own.

“I brought you a present,” she said with a half-smirk. “He got a little rambunctious in the car.”

On cue, the Atlanteans were carrying an unconscious Ubu
out of the sub, a fresh bruise on his head, and his left eye going black.

Batman grunted.

He really is the sweetest, most thoughtful man in the
world. Nobody understands that about him, which is how he wants it,
naturally. Batman is not supposed to be sweet—but he is. He really is.

He had Alfred send my costume through the League
teleporter so it was waiting for me when I got to Atlantis. Since we’d
learned about the symposium, it seemed like the whole adventure had
degenerated into a series of costume changes. And now, here, finally, was
the costume that mattered: MINE! My catsuit. I was home again.

Getting to peel off that last t-shirt and slip into my
own skin… meoooooooow. I felt like me again. For the first time
since the Batcave, I felt like me. No Foundation suit, no DEMON minion, no
tight waitressy t-shirt from a waterside bar… Me. Catwoman.
Catsuit-Purple-Purring-Hissing-Scratching-Enough with the water already-I’m
a cat goddamnit-Meow.

I had just pulled my hair out through the back of the
cowl when the secretary came in. She said Batman and King Orin were in the
situation room and I should join them as soon as I was ready.

I was ready, but I stalled for a minute, fussing with
the gloves and patting down the wrinkles, just so I could talk to the new
girl. That’s when I learned her name was Valerina, she was the king’s
personal assistant, and, since formal protocols had been set aside for
Batman’s visit, she was our unofficial guide and go-to girl for the duration
of our stay.

She seemed to think I was her equivalent in the Bat
Family, and while I’d normally shut down any assumption that I was a
sidekick or subordinate, I didn’t in this case. When I was working, I’d
always found support staff—assistants, chauffeurs, and whatnot—ready to open
up to an equal. I learned about more backdoors and blindspots by letting
people like Valerina think I was one of them. So, just for today…

We hit it off immediately. For someone attached to a
Leaguer, even a comparatively sane one like Aquaman, she seemed amazingly
grounded and sensible. She said this was her first contact with Batman,
and when I asked what she thought of him, she said he seemed “a lot like
King Orin.” No nonsense, as she put it. I could only guess what kind of
“nonsense” she’s encountered with the other Leaguers, but preferring
Batman’s manner to it certainly indicated more taste and intelligence than
I’ve come to expect in places like this.

“Normally,
Vulko would have the job staffing a visitor of his stature,” she told me as
she led me through the maze of corridors. “At first, I thought maybe I was
assigned as… Well, I shouldn’t say this, but judging by your costume, I
suspect you’ll understand. I thought perhaps I was given the assignment to
be a species of…”

“Eye candy?” I guessed.

“Yes, exactly. But as soon I met him, I could see that
wasn’t the case. He’s very no nonsense, rather like the king in that
respect. Now that he’s been with us several hours, I realize it was just… I
am saying too much, but…” She paused, looked around, and continued in a
whisper “From what I’ve seen, Batman scares the krill out of Vulko.”

Like I said, I liked Valerina straight away.

Ra’s looked up sharply, and made a swift gesture for
the minion Denni’ to be silent.

The lights had flickered again. That was the second
time in an hour, although this time, at least, they had not gone out
completely. If his engineers made any error connecting his equipment to the
base’s Atlantean power grid, someone would have to be flogged.

“Continue,” Ra’s said at last, once the flickering
ceased.

“The prisoners are exhibiting all the expected
behaviors, going through the motions of work but doing little when not
directly supervised. We have identified three who seem the least resistant
and are rewarding them in small ways. A pillow, an extra ration…”

“A beginning,” Ra’s said coolly. “There will always be
collaborators, Denni.’ There will always be those whose ambit—”

I could tell we were approaching the situation room
when Valerina’s easy manner faded. There were a pair of guards standing at
attention at the end of the hall, but even without the closed door coming
into view behind them, I would have known from her change in stride.

The guards let her enter on sight, no passwords or
badges of entry of keycodes. The first thing I heard when the door opened
was Batman’s voice:

“If you don’t think your men can hold him, I can make
other arrangements.”

Followed by Aquaman’s:

“I didn’t say that. It is true that Atlantis has very
little crime and what there is has never warranted the equivalent of a
surface type of jail, but we are perfectly capable of—”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“When I got back from that endless relay swim
around the Pacific, I told you—and kept on telling you every time you
asked—that Atlantis had not been invaded. THIS, this is how you invade.
Not storming the dome with a thousand men that can’t breathe inside a
flooded—Oh, hello, Selina, good to see you again—could never get into
Atlantis as an advancing army. But get a man captured! Ubu was just
brought into the heart of Atlantis!”

“Can we be so sure?” Arthur asked. “Can we absolutely
certain his ‘capture’ was not a staged event to give him access to the inner
sanctums of the palace?”

“Oh hell yes,” I laughed. “You didn’t see his face in
that sub. He is not loving the underwater experience. I’m still not sure
what he was doing in that bar, but I know he was happy there and I’ll bet
all the catnip in my wallet right now against all the kelp in yours, he
would still be there if your men had left him alone. Ask the ones that kept
pulling him off me in the sub, if you don’t believe me. He was not happy to
be back underwater.”

“You’re sure?” Arthur asked—and before I could
answer, Batman echoed him. Rather than put up with the Jackass Crimefighter
routine in stereo, I turned to the one I knew best and answered Batman
directly.

“How many times have you seen Ubu, and on how many of
those occasions did he strike you as a gifted actor?”

He grunted, and in my peripheral vision, I saw Arthur
grimace.

“Assuming you’re right, Ra’s al Ghul still has upwards
of sixty prisoners to our one, including Tim. And he doesn’t seem the type
who would part with a single one in any type of prisoner exchange.”

“Not… the way you mean it…” Batman said slowly. I
could see his wheels turning, then his eyes went square and I knew he’d
reached a decision. When he spoke again, it would be a new tone, the “this
is what we’re going to do” proclamation.

Except he didn’t say anything, he just looked at me.

“It is,” Arthur said, also looking at me.

“NO!” I said. I’m not in on the Justice League
telepathy channel, but I could tell that whatever they were talking about,
it involved me and I would not like it.

“No,” I repeated.

We were back in our quarters, alone, and by now I had
said no approximately four hundred thirty-seven times. One hundred in the
sit room with Aquaman and Batman, one hundred more to Aquaman alone when
Batman left to make a phone call, thirty more when he got back, one hundred
a piece to Valerina and Vulko while they took me the long way back to our
quarters, and now seven—“No!”—eight since Bruce joined me in our suite and,
in a particularly transparent maneuver, took off his cowl to “reason” with
me, face-to-face.

Four hundred thirty-eight nos. It should have been
enough for anybody, but not for Batman.

“Aquaman is right,” he’d stated (in exactly that ‘what
we’re going to do’ tone I predicted). “The quickest and least bloody
way to invade is to be captured and let your enemy escort you into the heart
of his operation. With Ra’s, it’s always been the most efficient way to get
inside whatever he’s doing.”

“I’m familiar with the Trojan Horse protocol, Bruce.
I’m also familiar with the Ra’s history and I’ve been biting my tongue not
to say her name. I know you’ve always found ‘getting captured’ to be the
quickest way inside with that DEMON crowd, and the absurd indignities
you sunk to, pretending to let that transparent harpy manipulate you. A
man with 1/1000 of your intelligence would have seen through her act in a
Gotham minute. And anyone who allegedly knows you the way that DEMON crowd
pretends to should fucking know that. But no, apparently they
actually are as gullible and stupid as they think you are, and they open the
gates every time and roll that wooden horse into the throne room. Fine.
They’re idiots, I accept that.

“But does anybody really think that lucky streak would
extend to me? Can you honestly stand there and say that preposterous,
already-straining-credulity-to-the-breaking-point
chain of deluded DEMON stupid would survive The Prodigal Ubu marching
me into the throne room trussed up like a Christmas turkey?”

“Selina, we have two distinct advantages right now. We
have Ubu, and we have Ra’s. The Demon’s Head thinks he’s pulling this off.
He thinks I’m off investigating Pequena’s designs on you, the world believes
his scientists are dead, and Aquaman is blissfully unaware he’s moved into
the neighborhood. We can shatter all of that in one devastating second with
you marching into his throne room and saying ‘Meow.’ I know Ra’s. His plans are all predicated on an
assumption of success. He doesn’t have fallback strategies or contingency
plans, and while he’s reeling, trying to find a flee square on three fronts
at once, we open the keyhole for the Atlantean troops and rendezvous with
Tim. He’ll be free by now, and looking for a—”

“Wait a minute, ‘we?’ Who’s we?”

“Selina, you can’t think I was going to send you in
there alone. I’ll be Ubu.”

It’s one of those statements that, if anyone else says
it, you laugh. You know they can’t be serious and you laugh. If Batman
says it, you know he can’t be joking and you should take it seriously, but…
Ubu?

“You’ll be Ubu,” I said flatly.

“I probably can’t fool Ra’s for very long, up close,”
he said, almost casually. “But the rest of them won’t be a challenge. I
made up as the last Ubu and got away with it for nearly a day, and he only
spoke Farsi. This one speaks German, Romanian, and English. Plus, Arthur’s
people have this wearable hologram unit they’re still trying to develop for
covert ops. The tech is fine, but their agents don’t have a lot of
undercover experience. Who better to give it a shakedown cruise than
someone experienced with infiltration, stage make-up impersonation, and—”

“Yes, yes, I get it. Who better than you. It’s
a tech toy, who better than you to try it out.”

I was trying for a lip twitch, but all I got was a
grunt, so I decided to stop teasing and think it through.

“Well, we will be doing Ubu a favor,” I said, thinking
out loud. “Even if it is you, as long as they think it’s him, he
benefits. He was
playing hooky on land, not a doubt in my mind. And now that we’ve got him, he’s been gone even
longer. There’s no way he can really explain where he’s been or how he got
captured without admitting to… to the kind of indiscretion I don’t think they
let you admit to in DEMON. If he doesn’t show up with a prisoner of
at least my level of ‘interesting,’ then he’s going to be flopping around for air
that won’t come, just like that dead-fish minion.”

“’Will be doing him a favor,’ that means you’ll do
it?”

“Ubu may not be my favorite person in the world, but I
wouldn’t want to see him deadfish, particularly when it’s partially my
fault.”

“Welcome to the least satisfying aspect of
crimefighting, saving the bad guys. And they never say thank you.”

I laughed.

“You saved me a few times. I always tried to thank
you, and you didn’t want to hear it.”

“I can tell Arthur to proceed with the plan now?”

Mr. Denial, just like old times. He even had that
stiff jaw he always pulled whenever he declined to be thanked. I decided
another reminder was in order. Occasionally the ass-saving had gone the
other way, and…

“You, on the other hand, what was that phrase you used
instead of thank you? How did that go again? Was it… Oh yes, ‘Put the Storm
Opals from Rann back on your way out.’”